ooh, it's about to drop...
Gosh, how tough is it to write a good short story ending? Surely it ain’t just me who finds this. A loose thesis goes like this. If a plot-driven story requires a twist or surprise ending, then the character-driven story often, though not always, leads to a moment of truth for the hero. But how to deal with that penny-dropping, A-ha! moment of clarity, without being overdramatic or drawing too much attention to the fact that this is an epiphany moment? As always, my motto is when in doubt check out how the experts do it.
When walls come tumbling down
To my mind, one of the best examples is the short story ‘Uncle Ernest’ by Alan Sillitoe – the tale of a lonely middle-aged man who innocently befriends two young girls he meets in a cafe, buying them dinners and then presents, until one day he’s cautioned by a couple of detectives, who warn him to stay away from the girls. Suddenly his idea of himself as kind and loving Uncle Ernest is blasted to smithereens by the assumption that he’s a pervert. It’s this intrusion of a totally different and brutal reality that makes the character’s world collapse around him.
He was only aware of the earth sliding away from under his feet, and a wave of panic crashing into his mind, and he felt the unbearable and familiar emptiness that flowed outwards from a tiny and unknowable point inside him. Then he was filled with hatred for everything, then intense pity…
Uncle Ernest by Alan Sillitoe (from ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ story collection)
You know you can make it even better, don’t you?
I‘ve grappled with this issue in my most recent short story. ‘The Hills and the Fortune’ ends with the main character (a not-very-bright teenage girl) having her own epiphany moment, when she realises that her boyfriend is out to exploit her sexually. This story was a runner-up in the Happenstance Short Story Competition and I was struck by something the judge, Janice Galloway, had to say about the way I’d conveyed my character’s moment of truth: Her realisation seems a bit too clear, too soon when it comes. (Don’t worry, she said lots of nice things too in her Judge’s Comments!)
But the reason I want to focus on this negative is because a) I’m here to learn and b) it echoes what my NAW tutor, Jackie Gay, said about the ending. While she thought it was a good story, she wondered if I’d missed an opportunity to add some of the physical sensations that a character would experience right at that moment when the penny drops. Here’s an extract from the story as it stands, so you can see for yourself what could be revised:
Con sighed. ‘You don’t get it, do you? I mean every bitch is sitting on a fortune.’ It took a few moments for her to work it out, but this time the answer, the knowledge, came to her in a slow and careful understanding. And while the blocks of comprehension were fixing themselves together, and stacking themselves up, she felt a spark of fire ignite inside. In her mind she started to run back out of the clearing, away from him and from the flame that was trailing her. She knew that when it caught her it would torch all the love she had for him.
But it was too late. She flew at him with her fists. ‘I hate you. I f***ing hate you.’
The Hills and the Fortune
I think Jackie makes a very good point. Perhaps what’s missing from the story is a sense of the character’s external world being rocked. What’s going on in her immediate surroundings? What’s she seeing, hearing, smelling? Have you noticed how, in moments of great shock, our senses get warped? Sights, sounds and smells become distorted, amplified, enhanced. (If you’re a migraineur, as I am, you’ll be familiar with this sensation. Ditto, I imagine, if you take mind-bending drugs.) And that’s a brilliant opportunity for us writers that shouldn’t be missed!
So thank you, Janice and Jackie. I think I’ve just had my own epiphany moment.
Over to you. What’s your favourite short story ending? What’s the best character epiphany you’ve ever read? Let me know.
Fiona Joseph
6 Comments
I really struggle with short story endings and I think a lot of the stories I read also suffer from weak endings, published and otherwise. It’s so very difficult to get the level of subtlety right that I think just as many writers go the other way, and write an ending that makes the whole feel unresolved. Very interesting commentary and good choice for an example.
Hi Nicola
Thanks for commenting. Glad you liked the Sillitoe example! It’s really funny when I look at stories I wrote, say, a couple of years ago. They seem to be characterised by what I’d call the Fizzle Out ending, i.e. “the story’s over now so you (the reader) can resolve it for yourself.” Actually that now seems such a cop-out AND a missed opportunity to connect with the reader, and to (subtly) build layers that hopefully will resonate with him/her for a while afterwards… That’s the theory anyway!! Fiona
Definitely a good theory. Look forward to reading some more of your stories soon Fiona. I always enjoyed them, and didn’t feel they fizzled out.
Nicola
Hi Fiona,
Your article on what makes a good ending in a short story offers some interesting reading. If I may make some observations:
So-called character-driven stories, which often end in a sudden profound realisation on the part of the central character, do more than just show a change in that character’s perception or understanding. The term epiphany is often associated with modernist writers – Woolf, Joyce, Mansfield for example – whose work concentrated on evocations of consciousness and largely eschewed the use of plot. An epiphany is a device used to evoke a profound change in the consciousness of a character resulting from their experience: a kind of momentary revelation. It need not be a particularly violent or dramatic experience that brings about such a change. But the change, when it comes, is internal to the character, even though changes in behaviour may follow from it. The epiphany is usually evoked in the imagery of the story rather than by the narrator telling us it has happened. Thus, to cite two famous examples, the sense of the snow falling all over Ireland is the image Joyce uses to evoke Gabriel Conroy’s epiphany in The Dead. Similarly, in Katherine Mansfield’s story Bliss, Bertha’s epiphany is evoked through her perception of the pear tree.
I think this is what your two critics meant when they suggested that the ending of your story would have benefitted from greater evocation of the way your central character’s experience made the world seem different. Through your writing we need to see the effects of that change of heart.
Of course ‘character’ stories have plots, just as ‘plot-driven’ stories have characters. It’s in the way writers use language to evoke the significance of their characters’ experience that the difference lays. I suspect the change in your story might only require a touch here and there to make it work, but the main difference
would be in your understanding of what your story can do.
Hope this helps,
Nick x
well, you know something special is happening when you get a lump in your thrroat, as I just did, reading this:
“he felt the unbearable and familiar emptiness that flowed outwards from a tiny and unknowable point inside him. Then he was filled with hatred for everything, then intense pity…”
For me, the great endings are those which tug at something inside me as a human being. They are those which shine a light back over the whole story, illuminating the shadowy places I’ve just been experiencing, making me ‘understand’ something.
There is something unbearable about those line up there. Uncomfortable. It’s hard to then turn to the next story and forget that feeling.
Another to try: In the Gloaming, by Alice Elliott Dark. (Best American Short Stories of the century, Ed John Updike)
and The Ledge, by Lawrence Sargeant Hall. Happens to be in the same collection.
Hi Nick, some good points here. Many thanks for taking the time to drop by. I haven’t read The Dead in a while. It’ll be good to go back to the snow imagery with a more technical ‘writerly’ eye. Ditto the Katherine Mansfield, which I read yonks ago. Definitely time to dig out all those A-level short story classics!
Thanks too for commenting, Vanessa. (I’m a fan of your work and your blog, and am waiting in excited anticipation for my copy of ‘Short Circuit’ to arrive.) I’m glad you found that extract as moving as I did. For me, ‘Uncle Ernest’ is one of those stories that takes you to a place of enormous pity that – in some ways – you’d rather not go at all and yet…
Thank you for the two recommendations. I’ll look forward to the reading pleasure that awaits!
Fiona x